The first year I was at NASA, I was only responsible for optical and ultraviolet astronomy. Frankly, there wasn’t much else. Nancy Roman Read Quote
A few months after NASA was formed, I was asked if I knew anyone who would like to set up a program in space astronomy. Nancy Roman Read Quote
I was born in Nashville, Tenn., but I have lived in a number of places. In 1937, I moved to Baltimore, Md., where I attended junior high and high school. I lived there for five years before leaving for college. Nancy Roman Read Quote
I had left teaching, which I enjoyed, because I realized I couldn’t get tenure at a research university. Nancy Roman Read Quote
At Swarthmore, the Dean of Women was very opposed to women going into science or engineering – so opposed that if she couldn’t talk a girl out of it, she just never had anything more to do with her for the four years she was there. Nancy Roman Read Quote
One of the reasons I like working with schools is to try to convince women that they can be scientists and that science can be fun. Nancy Roman Read Quote
I still remember asking my high school guidance teacher for permission to take a second year of algebra instead of a fifth year of Latin. She looked down her nose at me and sneered, ‘What lady would take mathematics instead of Latin?’ Nancy Roman Read Quote
Looking through the atmosphere is somewhat like looking through a piece of old, stained glass. The glass has defects in it, so the image is blurred from that. Nancy Roman Read Quote
Certainly by the time I was in seventh grade, I knew I had to have a long education if I wanted to become an astronomer, but I figured I’d try it, and if I didn’t get far enough, I could always end up teaching in high school or math or physics. Nancy Roman Read Quote
In 1956, I received an invitation to a dedication of an observatory in the Soviet Union, in Soviet Armenia, as a guest of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Nancy Roman Read Quote
